Prompt #1

Prompt #1

I can't say that I'm necessarily surprised at Luisa's fate. Let's see what she had on her plate now... Getting through high school, working insane hours every week, and studying for a rather difficult exam; I think this is way too easy, she should learn a new language while she is at it so people do not think she is slacking off. Kidding aside, when people have too much on their plate, they start drowning, and from the looks of it, everything collapsed around her because she was so busy doing stuff that she forgot to breathe. I understand her situation. The family isn't all that well off and she doesn't want to end up in some dead end job and stay down in the economic status she's in, but she needed to make some time for herself. We are not machines, we cannot always be going at 100% because we're going to have a mental/physical breakdown if we do. I hope that the lesson Luisa learned is not that she's a failure, but that she needs to find her limitations and then work within them.

Travis shows us a shining example of Murphy's law. If something is going to go wrong, it is going to be when you need it to work the most. Just look at the poor sap. He's got the camera rolling for what will be a national audience and he has this big ominous review board sitting in stiff chairs with even stiffer expressions on their faces. And come on, the suit? You can just tell that the last time he put something that fancy on was for someone's wedding or funeral. "Uh hello... T-t-this is my project that I have worked on for a long time, I'm very proud of it." And of course it fails to work, that should be an automatic job at Microsoft in my opinion, they are on exactly the same wavelength. Preparation reduces the likelihood of Murphy's law happening exponentially. But I give this to his credit: he can think on his feet. He did a good job of explaining what they should have seen, but as he said: "You can talk all you want, if you don't have anything to back it up, you're in trouble."

Moving on. Sidra and Kep are going to be combined in this paragraph because they were both such standout students and I also don't feel like making a fourth paragraph. In short, they got their stuff straight. What does Sidra have to boast about? She is obviously active in her school as she was holding a microphone at a school assembly. She also understands computers AND she helps out little kids. Seriously, karmic justice should see to it that a big suitcase full of money ends up in her general direction. Finding the time to help out those who are less well off gives you a boost of confidence and self-esteem, which in turn leads to increased performance which leads to more confidence etc. etc. etc. Sidra really benefitted from that self-confidence and it took her places. Kep can speak two languages, right? He was the only one who did surprise me a little. Immigration into a new country is a major life event and stressor, even if he was only two (he was two when they immigrated, right? Just going off memory here as I did not write that down). He could not have had it easy constantly going from one set of values to another (one set at home from a family that lived in a different country and then another set of values that America holds near and dear to its heart). He managed it well and got a good reward in the end, good for him.

All in all, it was an interesting video. It is always interesting to see how different people succeed and fail in different situations...